northeast-flora-and-fauna

Here's a perched Chipping Sparrow from last spring. I usually notice them when they're foraging on the ground, though I'm sure they spend a fair amount of time in trees like this 1. The females build the nests, but it's not unusual for her to begin building only to abandon that nest and build elsewhere. I'm not sure why she'd do that: Perhaps when she's building a nest, a threat that wasn't immediately apparent is ultimately brought to her attention. Maybe by starting to build a nest in 1 spot, she's trying to food predators and/or brood parasites (I'm looking at you, Brown-headed Cowbird ) with a decoy nest. I don't think the nest takes all that long to build, but conditions do change. Maybe she realizes that the dense foliage she thought she'd get for Nest #1 isn't going to leaf out, and so she moves on to Nest #2. Chipping Sparrows aren't considered great architects. At the risk of being judgy, their nests tend to be looser/fl...

Did this Chipping Sparrow try and hide from my by ducking behind a single blade of grass? Probably not. Though it's difficult to tell what animals are thinking [1], I suspect that when birds can see you (and this 1 certainly could see me) they figure they're in danger and take evasive maneuvers [2] or utilize cloaking devices [3], similar to Star Trek warships. I've also found that sometimes when I'm scanning a tree for a vocalizing bird, the vocalization will suddenly stop, and my suspicion is that the bird recognized that I was beginning to look in their direction. (I wish I could say that I frequently spot the bird after it stops singing/calling ... but that doesn't seem to happen very often.) Despite the slight obstruction, I more or less liked the picture I got. May 8, 2023 at Willowwood Arboretum Photo 282304696, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) [1] This difficulty doesn't stop me from trying to figure them out, of course. [2] Evasive mane...

Here's a Chipping Sparrow , a bird I see the most around May (this picture was from early May of 2023) but will encounter sometimes in the summer. My guess is that this is because we're on the southern part of their summer range, and in the early spring I'm seeing at least some individuals who are passing through New Jersey on their way further north. In the summer I'm probably only seeing the Chipping Sparrows that have chosen to breed here. Though not our most distinctive sparrow (that's probably the showy Eastern Towhee ), these crisp-looking little birds with the rufus caps generally stand out from the "little brown birds". Their closest relatives that are commonly found in New Jersey are the Field Sparrows . Chipping and Field Sparrows aren't extremely common here, but it's also not hard to run across a few of them. Chipping Sparrows frequently sing a chi-chi-chi-chi song which led to their name. May 3, 2023 at Duke Farms Photo 278557367, (c)...